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This is also why Google+ will fail unless they get these types of people in.. And the majority of Google+'s users, those who tried to escape all the games and these users there, will be surprised. However, a social network is dead if no one is saying or sharing anything.

I would personally hate if someone always called me about every mundane detail in their life. I have lots of things to do, I don't want to chit-chat in phone unless it's actually something important. However I can go to Facebook when I have time and most of my friends (you know, you can choose them and even ignore the real life friends who spam shit) post only interesting or fun stuff. Besides, how do you show photos via phone?

Social networks aren't the problem here, they're really good especially if you

Sorry, disagree with your last statement that social networks aren't the problem.

Facebook has some fundamental flaws, which arise from conflicts of interest between their users and their business model. Facebook don't want you to use it "correctly" as defined by the power user.(Inb4 that trite meme about the users being the product.)

Maybe google, with it's broader product range, and less reliance on any individual product, will be able to offer a far superior product, because they don't have to cannibalize

I think it's fair to say I'm an extrovert -- I have a blog [fyngyrz.com] where I post things of interest to me and answer questions; I welcome decent quality remarks (I simply remove low-level gibbering before it ever sees the light of day), I have yet another personal website from the pre-blog days, I've released a fair number of PD software efforts (not GPL... GPL is da debbil), and I have a healthy social life at home. I stay in contact with my old friends (and I always have... I tend not to lose track of people I thi

I would personally hate if someone always called me about every mundane detail in their life.
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Sorry, just feel it necessary at this moment to point out that I am enjoying a nice cup of tea after a blissfull pee.

Not everyone uses social networking for that purpose. There are family and friends that are interested in changes to one another's health, jobs, interesting activities we've been pursuing, etc. Rather than individually email or phone 50 to 100 people to tell them my daughter's cat ran away or my son graduated from arrrrrrrmy training sir, I can post that on Facebook while limiting the availability of that information to a whitelist of known friends. I'm not seeking popularity any more than I tried to be

Narcism isn't a personality disorder. There are many good things it brings to a person. You could just as well say that anyone with good self-esteem is narcistic. People seem to make up "disorders" for every kind of behavior nowadays..

Exactly. I began the sign up procedure but stopped when it got to the point of asking for my real name (or something else personal, I forget).

Not sure why you're so worried about protecting your real name, Ron, considering you link straight from your Slashdot profile to your personal website with your name and photo. Are you really that concerned about your privacy, or is this just privacy theater?

The study also found that those with higher self-esteem are more likely to protect their personal information.

Pretty much sums up the driving force behind social networking. Give people a reason to actually like themselves in society and not feel like they have to be attention whores 24/7 and privacy becomes much less of an issue in the context of these sites.

I find this interesting as I subscribe to the exact opposite thought process. I am an extremely confident individual who has almost no feeling of need to justify myself to others. I could care less about what people that I don't care about think of me and I don't really care to be close to people who don't like me (though I do try to be likeable as I don't want to intentionally upset people). I could care less what people know about me and have no issue with info about me being public information. I'd r

I find this interesting as I subscribe to the exact opposite thought process. I am an extremely confident individual who has almost no feeling of need to justify myself to others. I could care less about what people that I don't care about think of me and I don't really care to be close to people who don't like me (though I do try to be likeable as I don't want to intentionally upset people). I could care less what people know about me and have no issue with info about me being public information. I'd rather the information be out there for people who want to find it than not have it available for people who need to find it. I don't obsess over posting every detail of my life, but I also see no reason to conceal details of my life that I do feel like commenting on.

Not sure if that is making a joke or simply trying to over-summarize my post. I don't think I like to talk about myself a lot as I don't post much other than details on contact and hobbies and activities. My facebook gets updated maybe once a month, if that. I just wanted to present an outliers view relevant to the previous posters comment that for people, their confidence actually makes it so privacy isn't a big deal and isn't something to be valued (or the point at which they view things as private may

Doesn't that just mean you're a statistical outlier in the context of this study? This is a trend, not a mathematical equation. One contradicting piece of data doesn't disprove a trend, whereas in math, one contradicting piece of data can disprove a whole equation.

Yeah, I was not faulting the study, I was just commenting on the assessment of the previous commenter that if people had confidence they wouldn't have a reason to put their personal information out there. That said I guess we were also kind of talking about different things as he seems to have more issues with spilling a life play by play instead simply exposing personal details. I was also trying to offer a counterpoint to show a rationale of outliers on the edge of the curve even if it is non-standard.

Give people a reason to actually like themselves in society and not feel like they have to be attention whores 24/7 and privacy becomes much less of an issue in the context of these sites.

The argument was not:

... if people had confidence they wouldn't have a reason to put their personal information out there.

If you want to argue on whether or not privacy becomes less of an issue with increased self-esteem, go nuts. But don't argue on something you conjured up yourself and say that's countering my point. You're interpreting my words as you want to see them, rather than trying to understand what I was trying to say in the first place.

Social networking isn't going away whether people like themselves or not. However, when people allow themselves to be

Oh, I tried to post this too, but my phone died on me. The way I actually ended up reading your post, I thought you were saying is that if we as a society learned to value ourselves (individually more), then privacy issues would be less common on the sites. I was reading it as a societal thing instead of an individual priority to decision making, but your follow up made it much more clear.

I actually mean that I could care less what other people think. My valuation of myself comes from what I value, not what others value about me. The only way I care about what someone thinks is if they are close enough to me that I have given their opinion of me value. I am not unaware of what people think of me, but it doesn't define me and if they don't like me and I don't feel that their is justification to what they think myself, it won't bother me. Confidence allows someone to be more reliant on wha

I use Facebook daily, but I only have minimal ID info in my profile. I don't play any FB games or take any FB quizzes... basically anything that wants to access my personal info is routinely blocked. I treat FB more like a blog, I post links to some things I'm reading, and occasionally "like" or comment on friends' posts.

Define leech. A leech's safety is not dependent on the host. Even if the host dies, the leech can simply find a new host.

I don't publish info on FB that doesn't already exist in the phone book. I'm not in a position to worry much about photos. I've restricted my privacy settings to "friends only" for most things (not friends of friends).

The only thing I'm worried about is the "Truth Game," which allows my "friends" to answer questions about me. I never "opted-in" to this system, but my "friends" are still a

That game (and many others like it) is a meme virus, and it exists *solely* for the purpose of getting access to your personal data. The questions themselves aren't at all revealing -- "what is taiwanjohn's favorite color?" "did taiwanjohn take a bath today?" (I'm not kidding, I saw that one come up when I first thought those were real questions with real answers, and allowed the stupid app to access my data so I could read the answers). The point of the exercise is that you don't KNOW what question your

The only thing I'm worried about is the "Truth Game," which allows my "friends" to answer questions about me. I never "opted-in" to this system, but my "friends" are still allowed to comment on me without my permission. I reckon my "friends" aren't saying anything catastrophic, but I'd rather not participate at all. But thus far I have not found any way to opt-out. This is the sort of thing that makes me doubt the safety of Facebook.

Have you tried turning off platform apps (i.e. turn off all platform apps)? If you have it off, I believe that your friends applications will not have access to your name at all, so they will not be able to invite you to anything, or answer a question about you, as you will not appear in the list of friends that the application has access to (I think turning off platform apps prevents all applications from having any of your information - including your friends apps). I have them turned off, and do not reme

Well, having a profile at all means that you are subject to Facebook's terms of service, which is not only subject to change at any time, but currently grants them the right to the information that you do post - at mininum, that comprises a map of your associations, which could easily find itself in the hands of government or law enforcement agencies should they have use for it, since you signed away the rights to this information when you signed up. By your own admission, you post about the books that you

I'd be fascinated to learn what they can glean about my political leanings from my preference for Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde and the like. Of course they don't really need to look that far; they only need to see on my personal info page under political preferences where I flat-out say "They are all lying weasels."

Everything on the internet is public data unless you make sure your own data is secured. While I don't feel the need to post anything and everything to social media sites, I certainly wouldn't trust any sensitive information in the hands of others under the guise of "privacy settings".

Privacy erosion is slow. What you do wrong today you might not notice until five years from now when you're applying for a job, or trying to get a mortgage or trying to get married. Shit you put on Facebook is the permanent record that your high-school guidance counselor warned you about.

People surrender their freedom every day when they go to work. Why wouldn't they then ALSO surrender their freedom when they are goofing off at work?

This is the bullshit myth that never seems to die. Anyone who's been on FB for longer than 5 min. knows who can see what and how to adjust their settings. I have my settings such that only friends and relatives can see my posts and details. NO ONE ELSE CAN SEE THIS unless I grant them that permission.

I agree with you, that the concept of privacy for our day to day actions is dead. However, until the rest of the world catches up in a moral and ethical sense, it still pays to put the effort into keeping things you want private to be private.

Should it really matter to my boss if I sleep around/get hammered/love comic books? No, but there are enough self appointed moral guardians and just general 'holier than thou' (and the nearly bad 'cooler than thou') that posting any of those things can damage your ca

Extrapolation of results: If you're not on FB at all, you either have immense self esteem or you crave rejection? Or, you know, you have RL friends to interact with, ones who already know the important things about you, and you them...

people who open up the personal details of their life will have richer social lives. those who clam up will have no social life. completely true

the problem is when you inject technology into this basic social truth. now, when you open up, you aren't sharing with people who might become your friends, you are sharing with a database and a piece of algorithm optimized to extract money from you, and perhaps government interested in profiling you, and a whole manner of ways that your personal information can be

"Self-esteem increases with age, and those with a higher self-esteem are more likely to protect their personal information".

So it says those "are more likely" but not that "self-esteem causes". In other words, this sentence is made to sound like there is a connection, but avoids claiming there is a causal one. It is only saying "with age people are more private". Well, that directly contradicts "kids and adults are similar."

Secondly, this is an online survey. What kind of online user fills out online surveys these days anyway? Did they enter thinking they'd "win" a free iPad? Savvy adults rarely do surveys, or facebook surveys for that matter.

Thirdly, the study doesn't consider the subject's understanding of facebook, the default settings or how to change settings on facebook. Do they know their faces appear on sites they Like if the sites adds a facebook widget? Or that Everyone can see their friends and photos by default? Or how facebook shares their information?

Agreed that FB is a social vehicle, it's used by extroverts of both genders. They tend to enjoy social attention more than introverts. Maybe G+ would be better suited for those who are less extroverted and wants to post things without turning them into social chatter, which FB seems to be pretty good at.

This is why pseudonyms are good. I never post anything on Facebook because i care about my privacy. One sites where i can mask my public presence with a pseudonym i post quite a lot of stuff. I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon and say "people who give up their privacy so they can try to be popular on Facebook" are losers, i just think there's no good reason why we can't have the options of choosing both privacy _and_ popularity/posting.

There's some people in the world who crave acceptance because, to be honest, they're socially awkward. They seem to lack certain social skills that others take for granted. Those people are the ones who feel the need to post about everything they do, where they are, etc. I know some of these people, and they're a pain in the butt to see on your facebook news feed, because they dominate it. Seeing all of those posts makes you want to de-friend them, or at least block their posts from your feed. Thus the pers

I must admit I feel very lonely watching all my friends get scores of birthday wishes every year, and I get one (from my wife, who I then scold because she knows I purposefully hide my birthday on FB)
Not only do I get very jealous, but seeing as about half my friends are either in IT or engineering and none of them seem to think twice about having their birthday be public, makes me wonder if my fears of a public birthday are misplaced.

You won't think that way at all when one of your friends becomes a victim of identity theft. The single most common thing to be asked to verify your identity is your date of birth. Be glad you keep it under wraps.

I remember a friend of mine changed his birthday on Facebook, sometime in March I think.

Come April 1st he had a lot of people wishing him happy birthday, and he had a good laugh (I was a little bemused as I remembered his birthday from a few months before, until I realsed what the date was)

One interesting thing to take from that is that there are people on Facebook who will just check whose birthdays Facebook is saying it is and send a message, regardless of if they have spoken to them at all recently (or